


Full Circle

by mrsredboots



Category: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Gen, Healing, Stealth Crossover, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27565867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsredboots/pseuds/mrsredboots
Comments: 14
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



Mary Lennox slipped out of a side door, hurried down the path to the Long Walk, and thus to the curtain of ivy that still hung in front of the garden door. The garden was no longer secret, but it was understood that nobody except Mary, Colin or Dickon would go in there without invitation. Old Ben Weatherstaff, who would have gone in and out with or without an invitation, had died the previous year, and Mary missed him badly

The garden was deliberately kept semi-wild, as it had grown during the ten long years of neglect. Ten years during which Mary had been a spoilt, sour little girl growing up in India with parents who did not want her and who tried to forget her existence. Ten years during which Colin had been encouraged to think of himself as an invalid whose every whim must be obeyed lest he sicken and die. Ten years during which Archibald Craven had restlessly roamed the world, fleeing his grief for the pretty wife who had died giving birth to Colin, having been seriously injured in a fall from a branch in the garden two days earlier. And, indeed, fleeing his grief of the son who would be, it was thought, a hopeless cripple, even if he did live.

And then had come the wonderful summer when Mary, sent home from India to an uncle who wanted her no more than her parents had done, had discovered the garden and shared it with Colin and with Dickon Sowerby, a local boy who loved all growing things and who, in turn, was loved and trusted by all who knew him. Colin, discovering he was not, in fact, the invalid he had been encouraged to believe he was, had learnt to walk, and then to run, and Mary had lost her yellow, sour, look and also grown healthy, and by the time Archibald Craven returned from his wanderings, urged to come home by Dickon’s mother, who knew how badly Colin longed for his father, they were both as fit and healthy as any other boy and girl their age. And it was in the garden that they had first come to know that Power that they called “The Magic”, but which is known by so many other names, and most often called “God”. But Mary still thought of “The Magic” when, as so often, she turned to it for strength and courage.

That summer, though, had been seven years ago, and much had changed. They had had a tutor at home for two years, and then had been sent to school; Colin to a school at Redburn, on the coast, and Mary to Rocklands, which was based most of the year in Sheffield, but spent the summer term of each year up on the Yorkshire moors she had learnt to love so well. Colin, despite having proclaimed, at eleven years old, that he wanted to make “scientific discoveries” found that actually, what he loved was history and literature, and it was Mary who was turning out to be the scientist of the family. She hoped to train as a doctor as soon as she could be spared from Misselthwaite. This would not be soon, since much of the enormous house had been turned into a hospital for convalescent soldiers, many of whom were severely disabled, and Mary was badly needed both as a go-between between the private side of the house, where Archibald Craven still lived, and as an auxiliary helper on the wards.

But now she had a rare half-hour of peace, and she needed the peace and quiet of her garden. She wandered around, seeing what work needed to be done, although the garden was in its winter sleep, and apart from tidying up a few dead leaves, there was little work now until next spring. But unless some miracle happened, she would have to do all the work herself, for Colin had enlisted only four months ago, on his 18th birthday last June, and Dickon – Dickon had been fighting in the trenches for two years, and was now “missing”. Not, thankfully, “missing, believed killed”, and those who loved him held tight to the thought that he might be a prisoner of war, or perhaps wounded and his details lost in the massive bureaucracy of the Army. Susan Sowerby, his mother, declared firmly that she would know if he were dead, as she had known when her two eldest sons, and her husband, had been killed. And she did not know that Dickon was dead, and would not believe it. Her staunch faith gave heart to the rest of them, but it had been two months now with no word.

Colin, too, was going into danger. His unit was being ordered to France, and would probably sail as soon as next week.

“Keep them safe,” Mary prayed. “Bring them home! Dickon, come home, come home….”

All too soon she had to make her way back to the house, as a new convoy was expected that evening and she must see to it that the ward was in order. Although technically the hospital only took convalescents, the Army seemed to interpret this as “Men who aren’t going to die tomorrow”, and many of them were still very seriously ill, and in pain. And many, if not most of them were suffering from what was then called “shell shock”, and had nightmares and hallucinations and, in the worst cases, retreated so far into themselves that they could no longer remember who or where they were.

And Colin was to go into this nightmare. Mary felt she almost couldn’t bear it for him, and certainly not for his father. She had grown to love Archibald Craven as if he were her own father – more so, in fact, as she had never loved or really known her father. If Colin were to be killed, and, realistically, the life expectancy of young officers in the trenches was measurable in days, it would destroy his father. His joy when Colin came racing out of the garden and landed in his arms, fit and strong, no trace of invalidism or of the scoliosis that had ruined his own health, was nearly as extreme as his grief had been.

He was too old, and too unfit, to take an active part in the war, but he was happy to let the bulk of his home to the hospital, and to confine himself and his family to one wing. The family grew, too, to encompass what was left of the Sowerby family. Dickon, before the war, had worked as a gardener on the estate, and Martha was still a housemaid. She had been proudly “walking out” with one of the footmen once she turned eighteen, but he, too, had been fed to Moloch, and Martha, devastated as much by his loss as by that of her brothers and father, remained at Misselthwaite, listless and unhappy. Her next sister, Elisabeth Ellen, also worked at the Manor, but most of the others had gone to make munitions. Only the two youngest now remained at home, and they shared three rooms on the top floor with Susan Sowerby, who, like Mary, was working as an auxiliary in the hospital.

The two women met now in the empty ward, and went on their rounds checking that all was as it should be, and that a warm welcome would await then twelve soldiers who were to arrive later that evening. They would probably miss the official hospital supper, but Mary and Susan would see to it that there was soup for them, and parkin.

“Hast tha heard the news?” asked Susan, smiling broadly.

“No, what?” asked Mary.

“Go to the common-room and look at the papers. And listen to yon row the men are making!”

“Whatever is it?”

“Yon war’s over at last! Mr Colin will be safe!”

“Oh Susan!” Mary nearly burst into tears. She hugged Mrs Sowerby, who knew, as she always did, what Mary was thinking.

“Yes, my lass – it’s no good to those who’ll not be coming home again, tha knows. But tha knows, too, that I’m glad for Mr Colin, and for those who will come home. Maybe even my Dickon, who knows?”

“I hope so, and I pray so,” said Mary. “But it’s gone on so long and so many people won’t be coming home.”

“Well, what can’t be cured mun aye be endured, so they say. And we’ll need to make haste if we’re to be ready in time!”

So even the momentous news of the end of the war was lost in the rush to get organised, but the last bed was made and turned down before the first of the ambulances turned up the long drive to the manor. Mary hoped she would have time to go and sit with Mr Craven before they both went to bed; he would be so pleased and would want her to sit with him while he talked of Colin, and of their hopes and plans for the future.

Most of the new convoy had to be carried to their beds on stretchers, and this took some time, so it was an hour or more before everybody was comfortably settled and fed. Some of them still needed to be fed, and Mary and Susan went round helping those who needed it.

And finally there was one bed left. The label said “Amnesia and shell shock”, but the bowl of soup stood untouched on top of the locker. “Will tha feed him, or shall I?” asked Susan.

Mary took one look at the figure lying so still in the bed, gasped, and said, “You must! Look, Susan, look!”

And Susan looked! And sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered the soldier into her arms. “Eh, Dickon lad,” she murmured. “Eh, tha’s come home. I knew you would!”

And the soldier, who had not spoken a word to anybody for months, looked at the woman on whose breast he had drawn his first breath. “Mother?” he said. “Am I home again?”

Dickon was home, but still very far from well. Physically, there was little wrong – he had been peppered with shrapnel, but although numerous, the wounds were fairly superficial and healing well. It was the mental anguish that he had suffered that took so long to heal. For this kind, gentle boy who loved all living creatures and was loved and trusted by them in return, had lived for nearly two years in the horrors of the trenches in France, and when his body was violated by shrapnel, his mind took the opportunity to distance itself from the hell in which he had been living.

At first, although he knew his mother, his sisters and Mary, he had no memory of recent years. This did not seem to alarm him, but he was content to lie in bed or sit quietly in an armchair, and passively accept food or medical treatment at appropriate times. He appeared to have no energy, no inclination to do anything. His physical wounds healed, but the lassitude remained.

In late December, Colin came home. He had been discharged from the Army and was not very sure what he wanted to do next, so came home to Misselthwaite “to recharge,” as he explained.

He was horrified by Dickon’s condition. With no real medical reason to keep him in the hospital, he had been moved to the Sowerby’s apartment, but with little improvement.

“He needs to get out on the moor!” exclaimed Colin. “I’m sure if he got there, he would remember his love of wild things and it would help him heal.”

“It’s way too cold for the moors, though,” said Mary, and indeed, they were white with snow and frost.

“Then the garden!” said Colin. “It’s sheltered there, and we could have a fire.”

“That might work,” said Mary, dubiously, but Susan Sowerby was all for it.

“I don’t know why we didn’t think on it before!” she exclaimed. “Wrap ‘un up warm, and tak’ him down there in a wheelchair, like they used to take you, Mr Colin, all those years back!”

So it was full circle. Eight years ago, it had been Colin in the wheelchair, pushed by Dickon, a circuitous route in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the fountain beds to the Long Walk. This time, Colin pushed Dickon there directly, while Mary hurried ahead to unlock the door.

The robin who had showed Mary where the key had been dug up, and where the door was hiding behind its curtain of ivy, was long since dead, but his descendants still nested in the old rose tree, and that day there was one busy foraging in the garden. As is the way of robins, he flew up to a high branch and sung his indignation at having his meal disturbed. A blackbird, too, was shouting just inside the garden.

At the birdsong, Dickon raised his head. Slowly, a smile spread over his face, and he whistled a few tentative notes. Mary handed him his old tin whistle that he had used, back in his boyhood, to attract birds. Susan had handed it to her before they went out. “Don’t give it him unless you think it’ll help,” she had said, “but tha’ll know if time’s right.”

Dickon took the whistle. “Aye, I remember this right enough!” he said, quietly. “But I’m not fit now for the birds to come.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Colin, brusquely. “You know as well as I do that Mary and I were no ways fit for the birds to come to us, when we first came here, but you showed us how to tame them, how to move quietly so’s not to frighten them. And if they would come to us, appalling children as we were, they’ll come to someone as brave and wick as you are!”

Mary laughed. “Remember how Ben Wetherstaff shouted at us over the wall! You sound a bit like him that day.”

Dickon smiled. “Reckon this place is as safe as it ever was,” he said. “Do you reckon I could get well here, like you did?”

He sounded uncertain, but Colin and Mary had no such doubts. “This is the garden!” said Mary. “It is a healing place, a place where the Magic is strong, where all of us have got well. I think Colin’s mother still watches over it, and she’ll help you, too, I’ve no doubt.”

It was very gradual, very slow, but Dickon was brought to the garden every day that it wasn’t actively raining or snowing, and gradually, slowly, with many setbacks, he began to come to life again. As spring came into the garden, and the snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils began to bloom, his energy slowly returned, and by the time the roses flowered, he was well again. Before the autumn, when the hospital was finally closed, he was well enough to return to his old job as gardener at Misselthwaite.

Mary left for London that autumn to start the medical training she had longed for, and Colin went to read history at Oxford, and then took an academic post there, and for many years Dickon was the only one of the trio who visited the garden regularly. But his children played there, and, when war loomed again, Mary’s children were evacuated to Misselthwaite and they, too, learnt to love and value the garden and found it a place of peace and healing.


End file.
